Marc Serré, the MP for Nickel Belt riding and the chair of the Northern Ontario federal Liberal caucus, said the CN Rail Oil Spill into the Makami River has to be resolved, and it is the private sector that has to resolve it.
Serré, who was in Timmins recently for the announcement of an $11 million grant to Northern College, said the spill has not been a good thing for Gogama and the nearby Mattagami First Nation
“It is definitely something that has to be resolved and the community has spoken up,” said Serré. “It is definitely not a good thing that has happened to the community.”
Two spills occurred in the Gogama area within a month of each other. The first occurred on February 14, 2015 and the second on March 7. Both spills were a result of derailments by CN.
“So we have the private sector that needs to get this resolved,” Serré asserted. “So it’s really a good thing that the community has come forward to demand this.”
But Serré said government has to play a stronger role as well
“I have been advocating in Ottawa with the federal Minister of the Environment to put pressure on the Province of Ontario because the province is responsible for the clean up,” Serré added.
There have been questions about the high risk of using rail to carry crude oil and bitumen from Alberta to its refinery destinations.
“I am really happy that David Suzuki came to bring the attention on the environmental side, spills are never a good thing,“ Serré continued. “We have to look at a way to avoid spills and look at the safety of the railway.”
“That is something I have been working hard for in Ottawa,” he added.
“Unfortunately, the spill happened and we have to find ways to correct it,” he said.
The February 14, 2015, spill dumped approximately one million litres of bitumen into a nearby, unnamed creek leading in Kasaway Lake about 30 km west of Gogama. In that derailment 29 tanker cars of a 111 car train left the track
In the second spill, that occurred March 7, 2015, 38 cars of a 98 car train left the tracks when one of them hit the bridge structure over the Makami River only nine kilometres from Gogama.
Both the residents of Gogama and nearby Mattagami First Nation have expressed displeasure with the pace and the extensiveness of CN’s clean up efforts.
During his visit to Gogama on November 18, 2016, Dr. David Suzuki was critical of CN Rail’s effort to contain and clean up the oil that is still lingering in the waters of the Makami River.
Suzuki said CN should clean up the remaining oily sediment and it is not good enough for CN to say it is better to leave it place because they do not want to upset the environmental balance.
“You’ve already upset the balance” Suzuki pointed out. “Going in and removing the oil is not going to upset the balance any further.”
“What they (the people of Gogama and Mattagami First Nations) are telling me is to at least remove the corrosive element from the waters and then let nature cleanse herself,” Suzuki added.
Suzuki told Norm Pellerin, a CN spokesperson, that people don’t have faith that CN is committed to a thorough cleanup because CN is beholden to its shareholders and they are going to cap the cost of the cleanup.
“I think we need much more ministerial intervention after all the government is supposed to be looking out on our behalf and that seems to be missing here," Suzuki said.
“Quite frankly I am surprised no one has gone to jail for this,” Suzuki said. “Perhaps then we will get a better response.”
In the long run it was Dr. Suzuki’s opinion that we may have to cut out using fossil fuels because transporting oil and bitumen by pipeline, train or ship is not fool proof technology.
“Eventually there will be a failure as we have already seen in pipelines, ship and rail transportation,” he said.
According to Suzuki, the solution is in harnessing cleaner energy technology to replace fossil fuel which also creates greenhouses gases leading to climate change concerns.
